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3/18/09

Thanks to the dynamic new digital media user community in Madagascar ( in trying conditions nonetheless), there is a tiny silver lining in the ongoing puzzling crisis at home.It seems that I have gotten the opportunity to explain it quite a bit recently. The fact that I get the call to do it is very unfair because as I said repeatedly, without the content produced by users In Madagascar, there would be nothing for me to talk about, translate or amplify like below:

3) As you may have noticed, I was willing to talk to anyone who would write/video about the crisis. Attention seeker much ? Well, that's for you to judge but the goal once again is to get people to look beyond the animated movie and the striking biodiversity. Not that we at Foko don't care about biodiversity, because we do. But it needs to be contextualized. That's what the bloggers at Foko in Madagascar do so at every opportunity we get, we direct people towards their work. This is not to get rewards from Google adsense because after all, we are all volunteers there, but because the only reason to explain something is so for people to listen. If no one listens, it's a moot point, right? So I get to talk because it's more convenient for everyone involved ( media, local bloggers are obvously quite preoccupied) right now but whenever possible, I'd much rather have the guys on site do the talking, without the diaspora as a proxy.

4) Let me repeat as well the other reason why citizen media added an important value to the information pool during the crisis. Journalists cannot possibly be everywhere, yet troubles were happening in several blocks of the city and in many different cities. Witnesses who can transmit information rapidly are crucial components. it is also no secret that airwaves were filled with biased news generated by both parties. Twitterers correcting info or warning people of potential hoaxes happened more than once.The memory that will probably always stay with me once this crisis is over is this inocuous tweet on March 17th:Dipnote is the twitter handle for the official Blog of the U.S. Department of State. I should be mad that I was wrong but3 independent sources also posted it and even the very knowledgeable French cable news France 24 reported it before amending it. I immediately Re-tweeted the note to notify people of my mistake and that the president is not at the US embassy( where he is even now is still anyone's guess). I think it is awesome that the administration is savvy enough to know that this is the beauty of twitter. Instant amendment of false information by sources who know better. When there is a gap in information, one wants to collect all potential info and get all the twitter users to verify and help sort out truth from rumors. Another reason why twitter worked in this situation.

addendum: Andrew Meldrum's piece on twitter & Madagascar summarize the idea well: "twitterers are not real journalists [..] we are complementary to journalism"

So there, I hope I clarified the sudden blitz about new media and the Madagascar crisis. The attention as oso said before, will come and go anyway and that's fine. Hopefully, the crisis will also be behind at that time and one can start elaborating more constructive projects.But at least now if one ever wanted to visit Madagascar, even virtually, one would know where to find a few real people online.

6 comments:

I noticed that there were very very very few French-speaking twitterers based in France or the Francophone community reacting to the events. is it bc twitter is not used by French social media but then Lemeur and co have a very wide attendance, at least few of them should have their say on what is actually going in mdg ..... since culturally we are this "close" like "family". Rue89 has done a great job following the Malagasy blogosphere , well.... at least the French-speaking ones but I am still convinced that they missed 90% of the great stories when not taking time to translate the Malagasy-speaking blogs (is it this hard?go asking those famous writers to extend their field of research). Lemonde, France Televisions and friends were politically well-behaving putting headlines from time to time, opening their comments section to readers,...Commercial community webmasters and partisan websites were the new players at this new media thing. I am glad that France and North Am based diaspora were able to express their feelings like they usually do on forums or newspapers.So now that some people in Mada are always blaming everything on the French , the French, the French at least from what I've seen on the internet and social media point of view : French people don't give a crap about what was going on!or maybe I am very wrong and need to get back to my web 2.0 basics.

keep up the good work yall even though there is a lot of work to be done....

I don't really have anything to add Lova, but wanted to say thanks for such a clear analysis of what led to all the deserved attention you and fellow Foko bloggers have been receiving. It's interesting to see how the US state department is reaction to and adopting social media tools. When they first started experimenting a few years ago I was pretty skeptical, but I have a feeling they've recruited some smart young blood to convince them to be more aggressive and transparent with their strategy. I hope that we really are entering a new era of US foreign policy.

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